“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”

.

.

26 September 2013

ITALIANATE LOVELIES FROM OZ ALPS

Castagna Beechworth Un
Segreto 2010

$75; 13% alcohol; Diam
cork; 95+ points

Disarming
Sangiovese and Shiraz from the solid granite of the Castagna family vineyard on
a huge rise near Beechworth? I don't
mean disarming as in seductive or lace undies or anything like that. I mean as in chopping your friggin arms off. See, I reach that point and I'm already
getting too many images on the screen.
Haven't even mentioned the Alps humping south, or the green honeyed
smell of that buffalo grass air. This is
the most immediately vibrant of the Castagnas here on my table. It may not be the best, but who gives a fig? It may be eventually. This is Heaven. It's out there. This one has an electric blue flicker and
that ozone crackle after the lightning hits the blackberry vines. There's some
doughy crust to the pie, and maybe some creamy zabaglione with a blue juniper
cutting edge, swarf on the floor. Much
rude slurping. Italy knows. Two days
open and its acid has a sort of comforting fatty lactic curl like human milk.
Oh Mummy. Umami. A work of rare understanding of earth, sky, table and
sensuality.

Pizzini King Valley
Nebbiolo 2010

$48; 13.8% alcohol;
Diam cork; 92+++

Victoria's King Valley is not Italy's Barolo, but it's got
the Pizzinis in it, which puts it out there.
You don't get many families of any sort getting so much from their
valley, in exchange for putting some tireless generations back in. These people don't seem to do anything other
than make exquisite food and wine and then talk about it like there was nuthin'
else to do. When you're there, there IS
nuthin' else, so you simply surrender with one of those foolish grins that
money cannot buy. With all that in mind,
I'm not about to mistake this wine for a Barolo, but it sure is King Valley
Nebbiolo of a very high order and I wish I had a few cases for the
dungeon. Dust, leather, burled walnut -
it smells like a '66 Maserati Sebring with a bucket of maraschino cherries
somebody tipped over in the back seat. Which could have happened on the way to
Barolo, come to think of it. Maybe we
just have to wait til we get there. A
beautiful thing.

CONFESSIONS

"After enough years newspapermen begin to pall on other newspapermen; they begin to take their good qualities for granted and wince at their shortcomings, of which the most common are a vanity that sometimes borders on the thespian and a sort of perpetual mental adolescence that I think stems from starting a fresh story every day or every week or month and never having time to get to the bottom of anything. They forget that newspapermen as a class have a yearning for truth as involuntary as a hophead’s addiction to junk. The question of whether the junkie really loves hop is academic; he can’t get along without it. A newspaperman may write a lie to hold his job, but he won’t believe it, and the necessity outrages him so that he craves truth all the more thereafter. A few newspapermen lie to get on in the world, but it outrages them, too, and I have never known a dishonest journalist who wasn’t patently an unhappy bastard."

A.J. Liebling,

war correspondent,

New Yorker,

Algiers,

January 1942.

HEALTH WARNING

"Take the hair", it is well written,"of the dog by which you're bitten.Work off one wine by his brother,chase one poison with another".Antiphanes, 479BC

HEALTH WARNING

"Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love."Sheba to Solomon, Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, ch2v5

Coda

(for Laurence Smulders

4 April 1932 - 28 June 1997)

Some go without any money,

Some go without any clothes;

Some go like ants stuck in honey,

Some go where nobody goes.

Philip White

GOOD ISLAMIC ADVICE

“Ale, especially that made from barley, clogs the sinews, causes headache and congestion of the head, yet it overstimulates the action of the kidneys, and, when drunk to excess, lowers the temperature.That, however, which is brewed from wheat, and is flavoured with mint and parsley, is judged better for everybody.Still, in the case of persons exposed to the sun’s heat, in feverish conditions and sultry weather, its use is inadvisable.”

From The Science Of Dining – A Medieval Treatise on the Hygiene of the Table and the Laws of Health, translated from the Latin by Arthur S. Way D. Lit, MacMillan, 1936.Previous translation The Schoolmaster, 1583. Original text from Mohammed ibn Zakariya al Razi, Arabic medical writer (865-925AD).

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by John Peake - about 1955, Broken Hill, Australia. House paint on Masonite, 163 x 110cm